


every breath that comes before

by sparkycap



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bittersweet Ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 01:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11243484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkycap/pseuds/sparkycap
Summary: A collection of mini fics featuring Ron and Nix being soft ex-boyfriends who are probably still in love and maybe a little codependent.





	every breath that comes before

**Author's Note:**

> All scenarios inspired by [this post](http://sparkycap.tumblr.com/post/151120483639/post-break-up-au). 
> 
> There's probably a better way to format this, because I'm not sure it's clear enough that these are separate mini fics centered around the same topic and not just snippets of one full fic, but they're so short I didn't want to post all eight separately. So if anyone's confused by the lack of a cohesive setting or timeline (although a lot of them could conceivably be set in the same generic modern au, which I have only just realized), that'd be why.

  * _i literally can’t sleep alone anymore so i’ve shown up at your door in my pajamas, can we have one more nap together, please?_



Ron does a strange thing with his ex.

It usually starts around one in the morning. An itch under his skin, a restless energy in his legs, his phone taunting him from the bedside table, well within reach. He leaves it for as long as he can, burying his face in the pillow and letting his mind wander, but it keeps circling back. Either pressure or boredom inevitably drives him to his feet and out of his apartment.

By the time he stops again, he’s in a familiar hallway, and Nix is holding the door open for him with a knowing look. For a moment, Ron simply stares at him, clearly wide awake and still looking like he might have just woken up, two days worth of scruff on his jaw and his hair bedhead messy. Ron has a brief flashback to getting kissed until his own jaw was reddened and irritated, to lazy Sunday mornings in bed feeling the same burn between his thighs.

Neither of them say a word; they’ve done this often enough there’s no need for it. Nix jerks his head for Ron to come in already, and he holds the door until Ron passes him, giving them a long moment to linger within a hair’s breadth of touching each other, so that if Ron turned his head their mouths might brush accidentally, before he shuts it with finality.

Ron knows the way to the bedroom by heart, and he lays his jacket over a chair in the living room as he passes through, stripping off his sweatshirt as he goes. The bed is lavish and familiar, creamy white sheets with more than one down comforter, an abundance of pillows that all smell like the rich aftershave Nix doesn’t have need of as often as he should. Without waiting, Ron crawls under the covers, dragging the pillow he used to think of as his close to him and burying his face in the soft covering.

There’s no restlessness in him now, but he doesn’t quite relax until Nix settles heavily into bed behind him. Ron fists one hand in the sheets—another flashback, then, to all the times he did that for much more pleasurable reasons—and closes his eyes so he doesn’t turn around. Nix only winds an arm around his waist, taking a moment to smooth out Ron’s tense grip and lace their fingers together instead before he presses both of their hands against Ron’s stomach and his forehead against Ron’s shoulder.

Finally, Ron’s eyes stay closed without being forced, and his mind stays blank, and he savors the boneless warmth that only comes from slipping into sleep after a long day or in the aftermath of particularly satisfying sex.

It’d be less strange, probably, if they were having sex.

 

  * _listen i know i can’t just show up at your apartment at six in the morning but i need coffee and no one makes it like you do_



When Nix opens the door, Ron says, “I will give you one thousand dollars for a cup of coffee.”

Slow confusion spreads over Nix’s face. He blinks down at his watch, and finally says, voice heavy with sleep and something else, “You know, most people brew at home because it’s cheaper per cup.”

“Are you forgetting I once saw you drop two hundred bucks on a single pound of coffee?” Ron asks.

“And you said I wouldn’t do it,” Nix says, stepping back and letting the door swing wide.

Ron shuts it behind him. “I underestimated your hedonism.”

“Your bad,” Nix says. He gets down two mugs, the one he always uses and the one that had always been Ron’s, the one that has a chip in the rim from the time he’d shoved it off the table. It had been afternoon then, closing in on one o’clock and Nix was drinking coffee from the mug he always used and pretending it wasn’t half-filled with whiskey.

While he makes the cup, Ron wanders. The living room has been repainted. The couch has been replaced. There’s no bar in the corner anymore. He checks the bedroom closet, the bathroom cabinet, under the bed for good measure. In the kitchen, he looks casually through the cabinets until Nix says, “I’m clean, Ron. Want to test my coffee, too?”

He does, because sarcasm and bluster have always been Nix’s favorite hiding spots. It’s just coffee, dark and rich and bitter. His has more sugar. He always says he takes two, and Nix always gives him four. They know each other too well now.

“I’m clean,” Nix says again. “Going to meetings and everything.”

“Yeah,” Ron says. “Yeah, me too.”

Nix chokes on his coffee. “What?”

“Anger management.” Ron smiles wryly. “I like the new living room, by the way.”

“You’re kidding,” Nix says, tone warm with amusement.

“I don’t kid,” Ron deadpans.

Nix shakes his head. Between the coffee and the tobacco Ron doesn’t know how his teeth are so white, but he’s always had a gorgeous smile. “I’d pay to see that.”

It’s quiet until Nix sets down his empty cup, checks his watch, and leaves the room muttering something about needing to shave. Ron follows out of habit. He stops short in the living room.

“Stain wouldn’t come out,” Nix says when he sees where Ron’s looking. “I wanted to leave it, but Kitty insisted on repainting.”

The walls had been white before, white until they were dripping with whiskey, broken glass scattered on the floor. Ron had cleaned up the glass before he’d left that night; the wall had already been dry. It’s just like Nix to want to leave something like that.

By the time Ron makes his way into the bathroom, Nix is halfway through shaving. He sets his coffee on the sink, and Nix pauses. A long pause, and then without a word he hands over the razor. He puts his hand on Ron’s hip as if to steady one or both of them; Ron focuses on the warmth, the pressure, his eyes on Nix’s jaw instead of Nix’s eyes on his.

When he's wiping the last of the shaving cream away, Nix asks, “You come here just for coffee?”

He shrugs. “No one makes it like you.”

 

  * _you keep calling me over to get rid of spiders from your apartment and i’m pretending i don’t know you’re not afraid of them at all because i miss you too_



“We can’t keep doing this.”

“Indulge me.”

“Nix—”

“One more time, all right?”

“You can’t expect me to be available for your every whim.”

“I’m not expecting, I’m asking. Saying please and everything.”

Ron hangs up on him.

They’d agreed to stay friends, promised even, and it turns out that was easier said than done. The easy part is spending time with each other; the hard part is leaving after. Friends means distance, and boundaries, and not doing things like calling each other over after eleven at night without a legitimate reason. Nix tends to take this as a bit of a challenge.

And Ron has always been bad at resisting him, mostly because up until now he’s never seen the point of trying at all.

Nix is sprawled on the couch when Ron lets himself into his apartment, visibly tipsy but still too sober to use it as an excuse. He offers Ron a lazy smile. “Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah, you look like you need me,” Ron says dryly.

“I’ll have you know, this is the most terrified I’ve ever been.” It’s about the twelfth time Nix has given him a line like that, and he isn’t even trying to sell it anymore. He’d at least made an effort those first few times, but at this point he doesn’t even bother to stop smiling.

“Where is it?” Ron asks.

Nix points wordlessly, and at least he’s not lying this time. There’s a spider sitting on the windowsill a few feet away from the couch. Ron refrains from pointing out that if he was really afraid he might’ve _moved_. Instead he simply grabs a wad of paper towel and crushes the spider under it, rolling his eyes at Nix’s exaggerated sigh of relief. To his displeasure, he still flushes when Nix says fondly, “My hero.”

As always, Nix tells him that now he’s here he might as well stay, and as always, Ron listens. Inevitably, he ends up on the couch being used as Nix’s pillow while some movie neither of them are paying attention to plays in the background. They both pretend to fall asleep before it ends, buying time until morning.

 

  * _cop!au i fell in love with you while i was undercover and i know you’re mad at me for lying but i have to go back to my old life (and i want you to be in it)_



“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Nix says.

Carwood grimaces. “Just hear him out.”

That’s when it finally clicks that this isn’t a coincidence. He looks between the two of them, Carwood across from him all sympathetic and Ron beside him trapping him in the booth, and can’t decide which one he’s more pissed at. Finally he decides that Carwood’s is the bigger betrayal here, because he’d always known Ron was a sneaky son of a bitch, but Carwood was supposed to be a gentleman. “Lip, you’ve been spying on me?”

“Not spying,” Carwood protests.

“I asked him to check up on you,” Ron says.

Nix doesn’t even know where to start. Finally he lands on: “How do you two even know each other?”

“He’s my partner,” Ron says, like it’s nothing.

Nix considers shoving Ron out of the booth, right to the ground. It’d be a dramatic exit at least. He’d do it, if he didn’t think Ron would just take him down with him. He laughs bitterly instead. “So you were cheating on me too.”

“No!” Carwood seems more appalled than Ron. He’s blushing. “No, he means—we work together.”

“I always forget you’re a cop,” Nix says. “Too goddamn nice.”

“That’s his superpower,” Ron says.

“And pretending to be someone’s friend, what’s that?” Nix asks. Some of the hurt he’s been trying to swallow bleeds through the words, he can tell from Ron’s chastised look and Carwood’s furrowed brow.

“Hey, I wasn’t—look, Ron just asked me to make sure you were doing all right until he got back, I didn’t have to—I could’ve done that without ever talking to you,” Carwood says.

“You didn’t have the right to do that,” he tells Ron, leaving out the fact that he might not have been doing as all right as he has been if not for the weekly coffee dates with his goddamn partner. It’s one of the stupider attachments he’s formed, right behind the six month relationship he’d had without even knowing Ron’s last name.

Ron looks entirely unbothered. “Well, I couldn’t do it myself.”

“Oh, really, is that why I haven’t heard from you in three months?” Nix asks.

“I didn’t want to lie to you anymore,” Ron says simply. And fuck him for making that sound noble, like he hadn’t lied to him daily for half a year.

“Then I guess we’re done here,” Nix says. “Since you don’t really do anything else.”

Carwood snorts. They both look up at him, and he holds up his hands. “Sorry. I’m not here.” Nix raises an eyebrow, and he caves. “Just, seriously, Ron hates lying. He’s scary good at it, but there’s—you know, there’s that line, between honest and too honest? And he’s pretty much always on the wrong side of it. It’s why he makes people uncomfortable. I’d think you’d know that, after spending six months with him.”

It is, admittedly, something he’d noticed. He’d always sort of liked it—it was different, refreshing. If the warm affection in Carwood’s voice is any indication, he’s not the only one.

“Scary good is right,” is all Nix says.

“Look, I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be mad, but… if you think about it, if it helps, there probably weren’t a lot of times that he straight up lied. Mostly he would’ve let you assume.” Carwood shoots Ron a look, like it’s an inside joke, and says, “Ron likes letting people assume things about him.”

“You know,” Nix says, standing, and to his surprise Ron actually lets him by. “It sounds like you know him pretty well, so why don’t you just—he’s your problem now, yeah?”

And to his surprise, Carwood grabs his arm and stops him.

“Yeah,” he says, and he looks almost apologetic, “he is. Thing is, you’re my problem now, too. So you’re gonna have to find a way to get along.”

 

  * _i found the ring when i was moving my stuff out of your apartment and now everything makes sense_



Ron finds the ring when he’s leaving.

He’s nearly all the way packed after quite the efficient morning, and then all his progress grinds to a halt. Nix had ducked out for the day to give him time, but he comes back in the afternoon to find Ron in the bedroom, sitting on the floor with bags piled around him, staring at an open ring box.

“Oh,” Nix says.

Ron has to clear his throat twice before he can make himself speak. “What the fuck, Nix.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Nix says, lowering himself to the floor to lean against the bed, pressed along his side from ankle to shoulder but keeping his hands to himself, “I was never going to give it to you.”

Ron laughs humorlessly. “I’m not sure that it does.”

Nix reaches out and closes the box without looking at it. “Well, you know I couldn’t have.”

Ron looks at the floor. “You can still come with me.”

Nix turns Ron’s face toward him, rubs a thumb over his cheek, and waits until Ron meets his eyes. “You can still stay.”

There’s no need for Ron to tell him no. Every hard choice he’s ever made has been easy, all except this one. He’s not used to indecision, but he’s talked himself into and out of staying a hundred times. Nix has too. There’s nothing more to be said about it.

“Why do you have it?” Ron asks.

“It’s a nice idea,” Nix says. “Don’t you think?”

Nicer than it has any right to be. For something that was always going to amount to nothing, Ron can see the future quite clearly in his mind. It would be a good life, sixty odd years with the best friend he’s ever had and probably a dog or three, but then between the two of them they’d probably never live that long anyway.

“A lot of money to spend on an idea,” Ron says softly, handing the box to him.

Nix stares at it for a long moment before he leans over and tucks it into the side pocket of Ron’s carry on with a bitter sigh. “Not like it’s good for anything else.”

The expression on Nix’s face is too close to grief for Ron’s comfort. It constricts his chest, makes him dig his fingers into his thighs to keep from reaching out. Sadness is sour in the back of his throat, and the most he can do about it is cover the face of his watch with one hand, pretend he’s not about to miss his flight, and kiss Nix as sweetly as he knows how.

 

  * _are you?? sabotaging?? my dates?!?!?_



“Hey, Lew?”

“Yeah, sorry, I was just—”

“No, take your time,” Dick says, setting down his own menu. “Just a small thing.”

Nix figures he should set his aside before he gives in to the temptation to flip it over and scan the drinks list. “Hm?”

Dick nods to the corner of the restaurant, and before he even says a word Nix closes his eyes and bites back a sigh. “Do you know him?”

“Can you excuse me a minute?” he asks, promising himself over and over that he’s not going to fuck this one up. It’s their fifth date, and it’s probably sheer dumb luck that nothing has scared Dick off yet. Even now, he only looks amused as he politely agrees.

The situation is Nix’s fault. Or, well, it’s Ron’s fault, for being so goddamn creepy, but it is Nix’s fault for being a little charmed by it. More than a little, really. And as for the four other dates Nix has had since they broke up, it’s their fault for not being able to withstand a little harmless staring.

Glaring might be the better word for it. And harmless probably isn’t a good word for Ron. Still. Dick, at least, seems to be made of sterner stuff.

Nix slides into the booth across from Ron. “What happened to that guy you met? The professor?”

“Good sex,” Ron says, shrugging. “That’s all.”

The most ridiculous part of it all is how that still sends a shock of jealousy through Nix, jaw clenching with the kind of possessive displeasure he has no right to, hasn’t since things fell apart six months ago and definitely not since he started dating another guy. “That’s all you wanted or that’s all he wanted?”

Ron takes a sip of water and looks away.

Nix folds his hands on the table instead of reaching for him. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

Most times Ron did this, Nix ended up losing interest in his date completely and waiting until that and Ron’s presence drove them away. Most times it ended with a few minutes of banter and the two of them fucking in Nix’s car. That part might have also been his fault, but in his defense, there are very few people in the world that don’t bore him to tears. Ron is one of those people. Most of his dates aren’t.

Dick is.

“So this one’s real,” Ron says, leaning back, eyes flicking over to Dick and then back to him, that unblinking stare that always makes Nix want to pin him down and fuck him slow and deep until he’s blinking away tears.

“I’m trying,” Nix confesses, and he realizes it was the wrong thing to say when Ron flinches minutely. Trying was all Ron had ever asked him to do, and he’d never quite managed it. He swallows hard. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s way too good for me.”

Ron stares at his hands. “I want you to be happy.”

“Yeah? What changed from the last few times then?”

“Nothing. They wouldn’t have made you happy.”

Leave it to Ron to make borderline stalking seem sweet. “You could tell that from one look?”

“I’m sort of an expert at failing in that particular area,” Ron says wryly.

Nix doesn’t have the words to tell him how wrong he is, not beyond stealing a sip of his water and wishing it was whiskey and saying, “Yeah, so am I.”

 

  * _i know you can’t cook for shit so i’ve been bringing you dinner every night, just, y’know, to keep you alive_



Ron is contemplating pizza for the third time that week when he hears the key in the lock. That sound is bone deep relief for more than one reason. He’s tired. He hates living alone. He’s really sick of pizza.

The first thing he sees coming through the door are grocery bags. Two of them in Nix’s arms, overflowing with food, and he attempts to juggle them for a moment before he kicks the door shut. He walks straight to the kitchen, says dryly, “Don’t get up or anything, I’ve got this.”

“Oh, do you? Thanks so much.” Ron keeps his eyes closed and thinks idly that he really should get up and help, but his couch is comfortable and it’s the end of a very, very long day. He hasn’t been sleeping well. Listening to Nix puttering around the kitchen, the heavy footsteps and the pots clanging and his low humming, has him dozing off.

Until there’s a particularly loud clang, and Ron doesn’t need Nix yelling for him to wake up to know that it was on purpose. He grumbles his way into the kitchen, and then he stops, finally registering what his nose has been trying to tell him. Nix is adding linguine to a pot of boiling water, and there’s shrimp and chunks of lobster meat frying in the pan beside it.

Nix is busily not looking up. Ron starts to smile. “You’re…”

“Grate that, will you?” Nix asks, waving a hand at the parmesan on the counter. Ron goes without a word, all at once wide awake and lighter than air. They work in silence until Nix says abruptly, “I left you to fend for yourself for two weeks, so I don’t know, consider this an apology.”

Ron reaches out and grabs him by the front of the shirt as he passes, dragging him into a kiss before he can think better of it. “Consider this a thank you.”

Nix pauses, and then runs a heavy hand through Ron’s hair. Ron closes his eyes again, leans against him, feels Nix’s breath on his forehead when he says, “One of these days you’re going to have to learn to cook for yourself.”

“I can cook for myself,” he mutters.

Nix tugs reproachfully on his hair. “Boiling store-bought pasta and heating up jarred sauce is not cooking.”

“Keeps me alive.”

“There is a difference,” Nix says, pulling away to add more butter and a generous amount of white wine to the frying pan, top of the line copper and never used before Nix started coming over and doing this, “between living and surviving.”

The cheese, grated finely, rests in a neat pile on the wooden cutting board, and Ron would step away now if Nix weren’t standing shoulder to shoulder with him chopping parsley. Instead he watches, and eventually says, “You know, everyone says Carwood’s such a mother hen, but they’ve never seen you like this.”

Nix smiles, a little teasing and a little sad. “I’m sure he’ll be taking over for me soon enough.”

 

  * _you’re my emergency contact and i’ve been in an accident so you drop everything to come to the hospital_



It’s been silent in the hospital room for so long, nothing but the beeping and whirring of machinery, that Dick jumps straight to his feet when the door bangs open against the wall. There’s a man in a uniform that’s not a doctor’s or nurse’s, and Dick hardly has time to wonder if this is who he thinks it is before the man snaps, “Nixon, you fucking idiot.”

So this must be Ron, Dick thinks dryly.

“Hey,” he says, stepping between him and the bed where Lew is sleeping the peaceful sleep of the injured and sedated. “He needs to rest.”

Ron turns the full force of that intense stare on him. It doesn’t soften. “Was he drinking?”

“No,” Dick says. Ron moves to get past him again, and Dick plants a hand against his chest. “ _No_. Breathalyzer, blood tests. He was sober.”

“Great,” Ron says shortly. The tense set of his shoulders relaxes enough that Dick feels comfortable letting him by. He walks up to the side of the bed, and Dick watches him catalogue Lew’s injuries one by one. His fingers go to the gash across Lew’s forehead, and Dick nearly says something, but Ron only just brushes it, touch achingly tender. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Dick sinks back into the chair he’s been holding a vigil in for the last four hours. “He’ll be fine. Minor concussion. A few bruises. That’s all.”

“The luckiest son of a bitch in Manhattan,” Ron mutters. It sounds like an old joke. He sighs and takes his hand back. “I’m sorry. You’re his boyfriend, right? Dick?”

“No, it’s—I understand. You’re… you’re his… well.” Dick grimaces.

“Husband,” Ron supplies. Dick is told he’s a hard man to read, but Ron must catch his surprise. The twist of his lips is rueful. “Don’t worry, we’re getting divorced. He signed the papers months ago.”

“He didn’t mention,” Dick says.

“Sounds like him.” Ron takes a seat beside him, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “I’ll sign. You don’t have to worry about that either. Would’ve done it earlier, but I’ve been… out of town.”

Dick eyes the uniform with renewed interest. “You just get back?”

Ron waves a frustrated hand toward Nix. “Got the call in the fucking airport.”

“It really wasn’t his fault,” Dick tells him.

“The other driver?” Ron asks.

“She was drunk,” Dick says.

Ron leans back in his chair and huffs, closing his eyes. “He’ll appreciate the irony.”

He looks exhausted. Getting these kinds of phone calls will do that—Dick thinks Ron’s must have been easier, a professional notification as Lew’s emergency contact, as opposed to getting called from the side of the road and piecing together what happened from Lew’s concussed babbling. Then again, Dick hadn’t just gotten off a fourteen hour flight.

“You can sleep, if you want,” he says. “I’ll let you know when he wakes up.”

An hour later, Lew still hasn’t woken up, and Ron’s head has fallen to Dick's shoulder. He can’t help notice how much softer he looks in his sleep. He doesn’t have the heart to move him.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from This Will End by The Oh Hellos


End file.
